Odia Wikimedians User Group/Reports/Odia Wikipedia's 16th anniversary

The Odia Wikimedians User Group organized a two-day event during July 7-8 in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India to celebrate Odia Wikipedia's 16th anniversary. The goal of the event was to reflect on the learning from successes and failures from major past activities, identify the current and future needs, and build a strategy for the next couple of years. 15 Wikimedians participated on the first day, and 18 participated on the second day of the event. When the larger portion of the financial support came from Wikimedia Foundation, the other part came from CIS-A2K. This segment of the report gives a brief account on the spending and outcome from the support.

Group photo of participating Wikimedians on the second day.

Outcomes of the event

• A recorded version of a Facebook Live session where Wikimedians participated and shared about the use of Odia Wikipedia as a aggregated source of authentic information in Odia. The live video reached out to about 17,000 people.
• This teaser was created to promote the then upcoming Facebook Live chat with the wider Odia-language community with a focus to engage with the social media users.
• Message from Jimmy Wales, co-founder, Wikipedia.
• Message from Ryan Merkley, CEO, Creative Commons.

When the detailed notes of the event (mostly in Odia) can be read here, below is a short excerpt of the discussions and impact of the event:

A short talk by Wikimedian Subas Chandra Rout on the second day — these talks were organized to provide training to relatively new Wikimedians.

• About 20 Wikimedians participated in person in both days and participated in brainstorming about a strategy for next year, and a couple of years ahead based on the experiences from several outreach and other engagements. The discussion notes in Odia can be found here.
• The pre-event preparation also included creating a short tutorial on Wikipedia editing which will be published on Commons after editing and other post-production
• Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director Catherine Maher, and Creative Commons' CEO Ryan Merkley were requested by the organizer ahead of time and they all sent recorded messages. These messages were showed to the participating Wikimedians to encourage them for their contribution to the movement, and will be used for various public engagements and potential partnership meetings to showcase the value that the User Group is imparting
• A Facebook Live session was conducted where Wikimedians participated and shared about the use of Odia Wikipedia as a aggregated source of authentic information in Odia. The live video reached out to about 17,000 people and a great amount of live Q&A happened during the session

Expenses: CIS-A2K

Expenses from the CIS-A2K

Sl. No.	Particulars	Amount (in INR)
1	Lanyards (30 nos) for name tags	1359
2	T-shirts (30 nos) for Wikimedians	7756
Total		9115

Expenses: WMF

Sl. No.	Particulars	Amount (in INR)
1	Air Travel (4 Tickets)	19817
2	Community Equipment (Projector and Accessories, Standee)	36662
3	Community Hall Booking (Includes Lunch and Tea)	20475
4	Accommodation (2 Rooms for 3 nights)	16179
5	Foods and Snacks (Breakfast, Dinner and Snacks during Travel and Community Program)	10108
6	Birthday Cake	1800
7	SWAG (Paper Sheet, Stickers, Badges, Vinyl)	1935
8	Petrol and Diesel (by Anugul Wiki Tungi)	2231
9	Local Travel (Taxi, Cab and Bus invoices of community members travelling to Bhubaneswar)	4048
10	Miscellaneous (Banner, Stationaries, Local Transport, Snacks and Tips)	3000
Total		116255

Fund Received	Total Amount Spent	Balance
119327	116255	3072